Broken Wings
by Disenchantress Delirium
Summary: AU, OC fic, eventual Hiei/OC. A surprise visit from a strange girl right before Genkai's tournament spurs changes in Yusuke's training and his cases as a spirit detective. You know Genkai took an apprentice before, but have you ever wondered who it was? Spoiler alert: not the main OC...
1. Old Acquaintance

When Genkai announced the search for an apprentice to pass on her techniques, many were curious, many were excited, and many were frightened to think about the hands power like that might fall into. But only one was shocked enough to arrive at the temple the night before, a place she had sworn she would never look upon again.

Kaiya didn't bother disguising herself as she approached; in the dark, she was all but anonymous to anyone that didn't know her already. Her lithe frame and long black hair could have described half the province. It was only her eyes that stood out—vividly blue and just a touch too knowing for her years. It was a look that Genkai had adapted early as well, and one that the old master recognized as she looked up from her meditation, even under the dim light of a sickle moon.

When their eyes met, something seemed to pass between the pair even without words. Though neither relaxed their posture, a swell of relief filled the air.

Kaiya spoke first. "Ma—Genkai," she said quietly, inclining her head slightly but not taking her eyes off the old woman as if afraid she might disappear given the chance.

"Kaiya," Genkai returned, remaining in a half lotus and not moving at all. Her voice was oddly soft on the name, but became gruff again as she added, "And I thought you had said you would descend into the demon world itself before darkening my door again. So tell me, how is the Makai in springtime?"

The girl's jaw clenched, but her voice didn't harden like the old master's. "I would imagine dark, gloomy, and dangerous with just a touch of self-entitlement, rather like most of its demons. I couldn't say for sure, though." She paused for a second and tried to make the last sentence sound nonchalant: "I only came back because I heard some nonsense about you leaving the human world yourself—headed the other direction, according to rumor."

"As we all do," Genkai said simply. As Kaiya faltered, the old woman drew a cigarette from her pocket, lit it, and took a drag before asking, "So you came to see if you could skip the competition and just become my apprentice, did you?"

"What? Don't be stupid!" Kaiya snapped. "I came to see if I could _help_ you!"

"And you call _me_ stupid," Genkai growled in return. "There is no cure for old age."

Kaiya stopped in her tracks, looking rather like she wasn't sure whether to laugh or throw something. "_Old age_? Is that what this is about? Master, you are nowhere _near_ dying of old age!"

Genkai smirked. "'Master' again now, am I? Not 'lying old hag'?"

Kaiya's cheeks turned a shade of red that was visible even in the moonlight, but she refused to be distracted. "I'm not calling you that; it's what you are—Genkai, master of the spirit wave. Someone too strong and _way_ too stubborn to die of old age. So what is it really? You wouldn't spread the word that you're searching for a successor if you weren't in danger. Who is the enemy?"

"I have more enemies than you have years, girl," Genkai said with a snicker. "Not that that's saying much."

"I'm not a little girl any more, Genkai! I know when you're lying to me now." Kaiya shook her head and scoffed. "You were always lying. But I've seen spirits. I've dealt with demons. I don't need your protection anymore."

"Instead you're cocky enough to think I need yours," Genkai challenged.

"Are you really going to tell me you thought I'd just ignore it?" Kaiya demanded, her blue eyes flashing with a cold fire. "You advertised like you were on your death bed and honestly didn't expect me to show up?"

Genkai glared for a moment before finally relenting with a sigh. "I may be old, but I am not quite as stupid as you think. Once I pass on my techniques, my pupil could easily dispatch me in my weakened state."

Kaiya actually laughed, and Genkai growled, finally standing and clenching her fists. "You think that's funny?!"

"Well, yeah," Kaiya said with a grin. "You wouldn't pick an apprentice like that."

"You suggest I should pick someone softer—someone that wouldn't survive?"

That sobered Kaiya up quickly, and she searched Genkai's eyes quickly before shaking her head. "You really are crazy. You would die just so your power doesn't. No matter who gets it? No matter what they do with it?"

"With any luck, it won't come to that," Genkai said, as casually as if she was discussing a possible tax increase and not the loss of her own life.

Kaiya was silent for a moment, then crossed her arms. "Then I change my mind. I _am_ here to become your apprentice."

It was Genkai's turn to laugh, though perhaps a little more condescendingly than Kaiya had. "No, I think not."

For the second time, Kaiya's cheeks blazed. "Wh-what?!"

"Are your ears broken? Yes, I told you no! You already ran away once when I _wasn't_ putting you through rigorous training. I won't waste my time."

This time, it seemed Genkai had hit the right buttons. Kaiya was incensed. "You know I wouldn't do that! You would trust some random stranger that you admitted might try to kill you with your own technique but not me?!"

"My apprentice will have to prove himself first," Genkai said simply, as if that answered everything. The vein twitching on Kaiya's temple said she did not agree.

"Fine!" the girl declared, throwing her hands up in the air and glaring daggers at Genkai. "Go through with this suicidal plan because you're too stubborn to give me a chance—see if I care!"

Genkai just smirked again at Kaiya's anger. "Your reaction says you do."

Kaiya clenched her fists, started to say something, then changed her mind and turned on her heel, marching back through the gate and down the stairs the way she had come. Not once did Genkai try to call her back, but not once did either believe this was over.


	2. Possession is Nine Tenths of the Law

"Are you really, really sure about this, Kaiya?" fretted the tall brunette that stood in front of the floor-length mirror on the back of Kaiya's bedroom door. The girl was frowning deeply and tugging at the square knot tied in the sash around her waist, looking rather like she had never worn one before.

"Ninety-nine-point-eight-five percent," Kaiya said confidently, yanking the knot back into place and grinning at her friend. She only got a skeptical look in return, and at last she sighed and admitted, "Okay, maybe eighty percent tops. But Kiyomi—"

"_Eighty percent_?!" Kiyomi yelped, turning as pale as Kaiya. "You want to _possess _me and the best you can give me is an _eighty percent chance_ it will work?! That's a twenty percent chance of, what, me winding up in a coma or locked out of my own body or something? Have you ever even tried this before?"

"A couple of times," Kaiya muttered evasively, not meeting her friend's eyes.

Kiyomi's stare turned skeptical. "And just what happened those couple of times? I swear, if you get me turned into a ghost or something—"

Kaiya sighed and plopped down on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. "I've only ever gotten it to work once, okay? This guy tried to mug me with a knife so I figured, hey, what more deserving guinea pig, right? So I focused and it kind of worked, only I guess I was too confused trying to control his body and mine, so… he may have just tripped over a bench and hit his head on a street lamp."

"Um… he was okay afterward, right?"

Despite herself, Kaiya snickered. "Once he woke up."

"Great," Kiyomi grumbled. "So I'm gonna look like a fool _and_ get knocked unconscious."

"No, I don't think so," Kaiya said brightly, sitting up and smiling. "See, I'm pretty sure the trouble came from trying to control myself and him at the same time. Maybe the secret is to do something more like astral projection. So if I just lie here, detach from my body completely, and only focus on you…"

Kiyomi looked thoughtful at that. "Could I do the same thing, then? So we sort of traded minds for a day?"

"I don't know," Kaiya admitted, "but that sounds kind of risky. I think it'll be nice to be tall for a few hours, but I don't really think I'd want to be stuck in your skin forever."

"Good point. And I wouldn't have any makeup that matched your skin tone."

"Way to prioritize."

"Always. Anyway, how is this going to work, and what are you going to tell your dad?"

Blending into the crowd that had assembled outside Genkai's temple proved much harder than possessing Kiyomi's body. Kaiya had expected the sheer numbers to make it easier to go unnoticed, but there weren't a lot of women in the group and that was something _everyone_ kept noticing.

"Check out the schoolgirl!" heckled a man in a charcoal gi. "What are you here for, sweetie? It's not a good time to be selling cookies."

"The master's a woman, idiot," Kaiya snapped, shooting him a glare darker than had ever crossed Kiyomi's face before. "If you think she'll overlook me for a clod like you, you're stupider than you look."

After fending off comments like that for the better part of an hour, Kaiya was relieved when Genkai finally appeared to announce the first trial was to be a drawing of lots, and even more relieved that the old woman didn't recognize her in Kiyomi's skin when she walked up to take one.

But when Kaiya tore open the lot, her heart skipped a beat. The paper was white! This wasn't random chance, she reasoned; Genkai would have used paper treated to react to strong spirit energy. So why wasn't hers working? Had the old woman known somehow that it was her after all and given her a defective one?

No, that didn't make sense. Even if she had known, Genkai would have had no way to know which lot Kaiya would take, so there had to be a simpler explanation. Then it hit her: because she was in Kiyomi's body, her spirit energy wouldn't be synced to it. Maybe it was even somehow connecting to the soul that belonged in the body; Kiyomi herself wouldn't have had the spirit energy to turn the paper red, after all.

Kaiya looked around her; only one person nearby had a red slip of paper, but he would be her ticket in. Hiding her own paper slip between her fingers, Kaiya clapped the man on the shoulder and grinned at him. "Good going!"

The guy looked at her like she had just grown three heads, but Kaiya didn't care. Brushing the paper against his aura had had the desired effect; she was in.

Then the next thing she knew, a couple of muscleheads were threatening Genkai to let them inside and the old woman blasted them into the wall with the slightest movement. Kaiya just shook her head. _Not too old for that, are you?_

When Genkai revealed the next stage of selection, Kaiya cursed under her breath. The old woman wasn't making this easy on her; if it was true her own spirit energy wasn't syncing up with Kiyomi's body, then Kaiya wouldn't even register a score on the punching machine.

As the others fought over machines, Kaiya watched them thoughtfully. The other two machines, karaoke and rock-paper-scissors, both gauged spirit energy based on how they were played instead of directly measuring its force. It was possible she could still do well on those… well, either that or Kiyomi might have been right about a less-literal type of falling on her face.

Fewer people would be watching the rock-paper-scissor machines, so Kaiya started there. The game itself was easy, and she made it look like it. Once when she was younger, she had gone on a streak that was three hours long and finally the machine had actually reset from working so long in a row. Unlike the redhead furiously jamming buttons next to her, Kaiya reacted calmly and smoothly… until people started to take notice anyway. Then she abruptly hit the wrong button on purpose before she quite caught the high score, doing her best to feign a blush and laugh.

Karaoke was a little harder at first. Because she wasn't used to Kiyomi's body, Kaiya had a hard time controlling her voice and it showed. But apparently she did well enough to balance out with her other score, because when Genkai called the top 20 forward, Kiyomi Kasaya was on the list.

Kaiya let out a little sigh when she realized the next stage was the ancient forest. Its depths were dangerous, but she was starting to feel the strain on Kiyomi's mind from being out of touch with her body for so long. There would be enough solitude deeper in the trees to let her relinquish control for a few minutes to prevent doing any real damage to her friend's mind.

After a short break partway through where Kiyomi sluggishly resumed occupancy of her body, then for some reason insisted on tying her hair up in a more secure bun before being sedated again, Kaiya resumed her trek through the woods. Her mind remembered the general route, but Kiyomi's legs were longer and kept tripping over roots or getting her jeans caught in thorns. She had a hunch she was still doing better than a good deal of the others, though she hadn't seen any of them in a while—until a voice suddenly piped up over her left shoulder.

"You seem to know this path quite well! Did some scouting beforehand?"

Kaiya slid to a stop on the rocky bank of a small creek and looked back. There stood a short boy with a bowl-like hat, smiling politely at her as if it was perfectly normal to stop for chats in the middle of speed runs through a demon-haunted forest.

"I only ask because I found it impossible to approach beforehand," the boy continued. "Some kind of wards, maybe, but powerful ones. I didn't expect to see anyone doing so well."

"Just lucky, I guess," Kaiya said with a forced smile, wanting to keep going but reluctant to turn her back on any of the other competitors.

The boy laughed and a chill ran down Kiyomi's spine. The laugh didn't match his naïve-looking exterior, and neither did his next words: "Don't discount yourself; I certainly haven't. But be warned, girl: you will not steal my prize away from me. It is Rando that will have the human hag's power."

And with that, he was gone. Kaiya stood dead in her tracks for a long moment, trying to puzzle out what that meant and wondering if she had just been threatened by a demon. She felt weaker than ever inside Kiyomi's body, but the one thing she knew without question was that she now had to beat that boy. Whatever he was, he would be the type to wield Genkai's spirit wave for immeasurable destruction.

Kaiya arrived fourth, just before the boy that had stopped her, which gave her the feeling he had been following her unseen. Others followed until there were eight of the nineteen that had actually set into the forest gathered on the knoll.

"Time's up," Genkai announced, and shortly after a rather loud objection from the tall redhead that had been giving Kaiya weird looks at the rock-paper-scissors game earlier, a ninth combatant emerged from the trees. Knowing Genkai wasn't one to give second chances, Kaiya almost felt bad for the kid that had cut it so close and not made it, but then he told a story about battling a demon in the woods and Genkai let him pass. However, after that her eyes narrowed and Kaiya could have sworn the old woman was looking directly at her.

"Unfortunately, that gives us an uneven number, doesn't it?" Genkai said, crossing her arms. "The next stage is one-on-one battles, so that is unacceptable. Luckily, one of you must be disqualified."

A murmur went through the ranks, but Kaiya ground her teeth; she knew what was coming before the old master pointed at her.

"You entered as Kiyomi Kasaya, but that identity is a lie. I specifically barred you from this trial, Kaiya Shunsen. Give your friend her body back and get your own up here to take her home—_now_."

Before Kaiya could move, Genkai struck the middle of Kiyomi's forehead with her index and middle fingers, and the next thing Kaiya knew she was being blasted forcefully out of Kiyomi's body and suddenly found herself staring up at the ceiling above her bed at home.


End file.
